I sat down a few days ago, fully intending to start a collection of posts to share some lessons learned from my MFA program, but then my shower started leaki...

My phone pinged this morning with a text. The first words out of my mouth were, “What’s that? The airline telling me my flight’s cancelled?” Turns out…. That...

As readers, we’re drawn though a book because we care about the character, or we want to know what happens. But for a book that is a meditation on grief, som...

The windowless Beinecke Library floats over a stone plaza. Inside its cool waffeled shell, sunlight makes the white marble walls glow. Nestled in this twilig...

When we write, we send a story on a journey from our mind to the reader’s. In Understanding Comics, Scott McCloud defines mastery in comics as the percentage...

#writing #writerscraft #humo

#writing #writerscraft #humor

As writers, we obsess over chapter endings for good reason. The best ones hook readers for another few minutes, or hours. Not so good and it's lights-off-for...

It takes a certain amount of gumption to create a world from scratch, especially when there's magic involved. All the details to consider - How will it work?...

There's been talk lately about whether children's books should tackle hard subjects. This one's a no-brainer for me. They should. Kids read for truth and the...

Learn to use setting, packing, verbs and sensory details to build a compelling action scene.

I've been thinking a lot about beginnings - what captures us quickly and draws us into the center of story? We're told to start with action, bring the reader...

If there were Ten Commandments of writing for children, the main character shall change by the end of the story would be among them. Jumped, by Rita Williams...

In The Art of Memoir, Mary Karr writes of the need to burrow deeply into the writer’s psyche, to dig beneath the surface of how we want to appear to write wi...

Dear Architectural Digest, I am a big fan of your magazine. I’ve been reading it carefully for several years now, and I’ve thoroughly enjoyed the celebrity h...

I've been thinking a lot about beginnings: what makes them work? where are the key turning points? how do they relate to the rest of the story? Earlier this ...

I've wanted to write novels for as long as I can remember, but I've always had a hard time getting to The End. It's daunting, isn't it? You have this great i...

I'm in a bathroom in a small town in Mexico. It's the same as at home...but different. You can't drink the water, toilet paper is not a given, and you check ...

It's the first weekend that feels nearly fall-like here, in North Carolina, and I have that urge to make lists, clean the closets, and reflect on summer. As ...